World news or international news or even foreign coverage is the news media-jargon for news from abroad, about a foreign country or a global subject. For journalism, it is a branch that deals with news either sent by foreign correspondents or news agencies, or — more recently — information that is gathered or researched through distance communication technologies, such as telephone, satellite TV or the internet.
Although in most of the Anglophone world this field is not usually regarded as a specific specialization for journalists, it is so in nearly all the world. Particularly in the United States, there is a blurred distinction between world news and "national" news when they include directly the national government or national institutions, such as wars in which the US are involved or summits of multilateral organizations in which the US are a member.
Actually, at the birth of modern journalism, most news were actually foreign, as registered by the courants of the 17th century in West and Central Europe, such as the Daily Courant (England), the Nieuwe Tijudinger (Antwerp), the Relation (Strasbourg), the Avisa Relation oder Zeitung (Wolfenbüttel) and the Courante Uyt Italien, Duytsland & C. (Amsterdam). Since these papers were aimed at bankers and merchants, they brought mostly news from other markets, which usually meant other nations. In any case, it is worthy to remark that nation-states were still incipient in 17th-century Europe.
Komla Dumor is a Ghanaian journalist who was born on 3 October 1972 in Accra, Ghana. His grandfather was Philip Gbeho, composer of the Ghanaian national anthem.
Dumor joined the BBC African Service in 2006 as host of the radio programme Network Africa. From 2008 he has presented The World Today on the BBC World Service. He is currently also a news presenter for the BBC's international television news channel, presenting BBC World News and "Africa Business Report". Prior to joining the BBC he worked for JOY FM in Accra, Ghana, and was the 2003 winner of Journalist of the Year award given by the Ghana Journalist Association. Dumor is the only West African news reader on BBC World News.
Initially, Dumor studied medicine but he changed course and graduated from the University of Ghana with a BSc in Sociology and Psychology and from Harvard University with an MA in Public Administration; he is married to Kwansema, with whom he has two children.
Kevin Watkins is a senior fellow at the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. He was previously the director and lead author of the UNESCO's Education for All Global Monitoring Report.
Kevin Watkins has a BA in Politics and Social Science from Durham University. He also has a doctorate from Oxford University. He spent one year in India doing research for his dissertation: “The economics and politics of Indian Nationalism from 1880-1947”.
Kevin Watkins served as Researcher for the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (1983). He was then appointed as Head of International Development at the Catholic Institute for International Relations (1987-2001). He also became Head of Research in Oxfam (1991) where he covered issues such as debt relief, education , social policy and poverty.
In 2000, he was part of the drafting committee for the framework of action and the six Education For All goals during the World Education Forum.
From 2004-2008, he was director of the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report. During this time, he directed a total of three reports, from 2005-2008: